How Often Is There A Sports-Related Event Worthy Of Saying "Low And Behold"?

I got to watch my alma mater play hoops tonight for the first time since their second round NCAA tourney game last March. They were hosting St. Mary's, a conference opponent who is currently ranked #27 (AP). Typically teams will get up for a rival who is highly ranked, especially at home, so I was pretty excited about the game.

The game was set to come on a 6 Pacific time, and when I tuned in around quarter to six, the Purdue at Minnesota game still had about 10 minutes to go, so I knew I'd miss the start of the USD game. This was a little frustrating at first, but I did get a nice piece of information that I will store away for this upcoming March, and I will pass it along to you fine folks now (both of you):

Purdue is ranked 18, and Minnesota is ranked 21, and they play in the Big 10, so their chances of both making the NCAA tournament are very good, and they'll likely get good seeds. If you have any inkling that their first round opponents are potential Cinderellas, or if they happen to get a crappy seed and play a good team in the first round, do not hesitate to pick Purdue and Minnesota to both lose in the first round. The only way I will pick these teams to win a game is if I learn that their opponents have three or four guys get hurt. Or if they play Gonzaga, because I have a long-standing personal rule that I do not pick Gonzaga to win any games in the Tournament, and generally speaking, it serves me well.

(I think I need to formulate the Rules of Picking the Tourney.)

Anyway, as that painfully slow game withered to a merciful end, they starting running the USD-SMC score in the upper corner.

"Hey, USD is up 2-0...oh, make that 2-2...down 4-2...6-2...13-2. Ouch."

By the time ESPN2 switched over from Brent Musberger's miserable ass-kissing call of the Purdue-Minnesota game, the USD was already over. But then I remembered that St. Mary's had led USD by 17 in the second half of their conference semifinal game last year and USD came back to win in double-OT. Not tonight. But at least USD had the courtesy to play quickly, lose quickly, and allow ESPN2 to get to their next scheduled program a little early!

By the way, if you are looking for a small team to make some noise in the Tourney, St. Mary's is a very good option. They have a spectacular point guard (guard play+NCAA tourney=win), good shooters, some decent big men, 5 Australians (I don't know if it helps, but that is kinda cool) and they play serious defense. They won't be under the radar since they're already creeping into the rankings and have the nation's longest winning streak going, but everyone east of California will not trust this little band of Aussies.

They are impossible to root for however. Last week they beat a conference opponent by 50. No problem there; you should beat conference foes when they're down. The problem I have with it is that they fired up 31 3-pointers in the game. Classy coach.

One final thought on the Purdue-Minnesota game before moving on: we are all clear that the Big 10 Conference has eleven teams in it and that as creatively as they may hide that fact in their logo, that still doesn't make sense, right? OK. Moving on...

Speaking of Aussies and ESPN2's evening program, the next thing on the agenda was the Djokovic-Delic match. It ended up being a very nicely played, evenly matched four-setter between the #3 ranked returning champ and the little known American. The announcers made the point several times how these two were friends and how good the sportsmanship was throughout. When the match ended, they greeted each other genuinely and both thanked the boisterous crowd warmly.

The reason that all those warm feelings are worth remarking about (besides that they are just rare in sports) is that Djokovic is Serbian and Delic is a Bosnian-born American. I'm not sure how much you've been paying attention to the news for the past...oh...500 years, but the Bosnians and Serbs don't generally hug and and get warm reactions from crowds of people from the other place. I wasn't going to write about this because I couldn't really figure out a point I wanted to make that didn't get all socio-political and/or cheesy.

So I started writing about the USD hoops game when what on my TV should appear but a good old fashioned, Geraldo-style chair throwing brawl in a courtyard at the Australian Open. Apparently the warm fuzzies between the Serbian Dojokovic fans and Bosnian Delic fans only lasted until they got outside the stadium. Then a Serb threw a chair at a Bosnian woman who had just finished being interviewed by ESPN2 and the kangaroo shit hit the fan. I still wasn't sure what to write about because now I couldn't figure out a point I wanted to make that still didn't get all socio-political and/or judgemental.

So I went back to writing and ESPN2 came to my rescue again providing me with a nice, neat ending to this story. They went back out to the courtyard and showed some cops hauling the thugs away who had been throwing metal chairs in a crowd including women and children and low and behold: Australian cops wear Crocodile-freaking-Dundee hats! They're like Canadian Mounties but not gay. I am 100% sure that if they had widened the shot, we would have seen that they also wore just board shorts and sandals and carry boomerangs and machetes instead of guns and mace like our sissy cops here.

Add this to the growing list of reasons why Australia is awesome (#1 of course being how much hotter the accent makes the women).

USD Was Robbed, The Cubs Can't Buy One, And Raider Fans Steal Things

Similar to how the New York Giants won the Super Bowl and returned the next season with a chip on their shoulders after being written off as repeat-contenders and picked third in their own division, my alma mater's men's basketball team has been slighted after winning their conference tournament.

The San Diego Toreros knocked off two top 25-ranked teams (St. Mary's and Gonzaga) to win the West Coast Conference Tournament and then another when they beat UConn in the Tourney before falling in a heart-breaker to fellow Cinderella Western Kentucky.

So coming into this season, you might think that USD would get some respect in the national polls, or at least within the Conference! Rather, they were picked to finish third in the league and received just 1 vote for the AP top 25. Granted this was the first vote in school history, but it is still something of a slight. After all, they did not graduate a single player, nor did they lose their coach, and they added two top recruits (one of whom - Roberto Manfra - scored 21-points on 9-of-10 shooting in their season opener last weekend).

They are clearly not national title contenders, but for fans of college basketball, USD is one to watch this year (which won't be difficult since 15 of their games will be televised).

On Saturday, my wife and I watched Fever Pitch (which is a pretty good romantic comedy to fall back on if you are stuck having to watch a romantic comedy) and afterwards I was explaining why the "Curse of the Bambino" was such a big deal and how long it had been, etc. She said that it is just like that with her San Jose Sharks because they can't get out of the first round of the playoffs, and I didn't bother explaining that the Sharks have only existed for 17-years so it is not exactly the same thing.

But we got to talking about long losing streaks and curses in sports and of course, I mentioned the Cubs. I told her that they haven't won now in over 100-years. She asked if they'd ever been close and I said a few times, but mostly they have just stunk. Her response to this cosmically-cursed, haunted, agonizing situation was simply, "Why don't they do something about that?" I guess they just never thought about that - stop whining and go win something!

Finally, while I was in the San Jose airport last night (missing the freaking Giants game, but I am not bitter), I was watching a little boy who must have been about 1-year-old sitting in his stroller playing the the straps of the purse of the woman next to him. After a minute or two, I realized that he didn't know this woman, but he was just playing with her purse. I thought it was a cute moment until I moved up in line and got a better look at what was going on.

The kid had a Raiders' shirt on and I couldn't help but wonder how early Raider fans start teaching their kids to be criminals, if this 1-year-old was already working on purse-snatching.

Who's More Stoned Right Now: Big Brown Or Joakim Noah?

Now that the Spurs are finally, mercifully eliminated, has anyone noticed how much Kurt Thomas looks like that dude from the Snickers commercial where the guy is playing guitar and singing the "prancing nuget in the meadows" song? (click here to watch) Here they are:


Maybe it's just me but I honestly could not watch a Spurs game without humming that song to myself. And I don't know why but I think it is wierd that the guitar player is lefthanded.

The Mets crushed the Dodgers yesterday, which was nice. You always hear that certain players struggle or really play well against certain teams, but it never made sense to me. Why does Brad Penny suck so amazingly badly against the Mets and then is a Cy Young-type against everyone else? In his career against them, he has probably pitched to 100 different Mets players, and no matter who is wearing the uniform, they hit off of him. Doesn't make sense. (Note how badly I am working to avoid making a crappy pun on Brad Penny's worth when he plays the Mets)

In reverse, why does David Wright kill the Dodgers (highest batting average against the Dodgers of any player in 50 years!), or Larry Jones kill the Mets? Again it is not as though it has all been against the same 3-4 pitchers. Confidence is the answer I guess, but it still is beyond reason.

The college baseball playoffs start today (Div. I) and I am happy to say that my alma mater is ranked 7th in the country! This would really be great if they didn't get absolutely hosed on their tourney draw. The way the first round of the baseball playoffs work is that teams are groups geographically and play four-team double elimination tournaments. Example: Day one: A beats B, C beats D. Day 2: A beats C and B beats D. That makes two losses for D and they are out. A has two wins, B and C have one each. Day 3: B and C play with the losing being eliminated and the winner faces A for the Regional Championship. The next round is the Super Regional where teams play a best 2 out 3 series against another Regional Champ. That leaves eight Super Regional Champs and they play two 4-team double elimination tourneys (just like first round). Winners in each side of the bracket play a best of three series for the title.

Confused?

Would it make it clearer if I said that there is no clear ranking in baseball - there are three widely viewed polls (Baseball America, Writers, and USA Today/ESPN). Also the whole tournament is not seeded - only the top 8. And although USD is the highest ranked team in their Regional, they drew the #2 seed and have to play on the road. Depending on the poll, USD is 11/7/10th. Host and #1 seed Long Beach State is 25/18/unranked. #3 seed Berkeley (who USD plays today) is 15/22/19th. How does the #7 team in the country not get to host? How does the third best team get the top seed and get to play at home? How do three top 25 schools have to play one another in the first round? There will be 16 teams left after the first round, so statistically, if only 1 out of 3 top 25 schools can advance, we will have 8 ranked schools left and 8 unranked. There is no way that more than two ranked schools should be in any one Regional bracket, regardless of how far they have to travel to make it work.

Of course, the Toreros should be able to beat up Fresno State and can certainly win 2 out of three against Long Beach State and Cal. so all of this whining may not matter.

2012 Olympic Torch To Be Lit At Drive-Through

A classmate of mine from college, Susie Erpelding, is quite deservedly being elected into the school's athletic Hall of Fame for her basketball exploits. I can only assume the letter sent to me outlining the important dates and events for my election has been lost in the mail. There's no way the selection committee forgot about my "Conference Most Improved" award in 1999 (which is the nicest backhanded compliment I ever received..."boy, you sucked last year, but this year you're decent.").

And while USD may not have won a national championship in any sport since Zuzana Lesenarova in women's tennis in 1999, our women's volleyball team will be represented at the Beach Volleyball Nationals. Only six schools are invited. Alright, so it is technically an exhibition and the NCAA does not recognize beach volleyball as a sport. We're still gonna win and I am totally gonna rub it in the face of my USC family members.

A number of potential US Olympians will play in the tournament, including USC's Taylor Carico. She and her younger sister Lane (Mira Costa High School) will likely compete as a team in beach volleyball in 2012, since Lane is only a senior in HS now. Hopefully the Torch relay for the 2012 Olympics will not be "run" in a van, since I don't think automobiles were part of the ancient games.

Doesn't the idea of the Olympic Torch being hidden kinda go against the entire point of the Olympic Torch? I understand that there were protesters and they were concerned for the runners' safety. So change the route, or go to another city. But the Torch is supposed to symbolize the fire given to mankind by Prometheus that made man closer to the gods. The flame is essentially the eternal flame of competition inside us that makes us achieve great feats. And you aren't supposed to hide that in a warehouse down by the docks (although tell that to Indy after the government guys did the same thing with the Arc of the Covenant!).

In totally unrelated news, the Mets beat the hell out of the Phillies on Wednesday. Hopefully now they will stop talking about how Mets players are "afraid" of the Phillies. They don't get scared of teams they have trouble with, athletes just lose their confidence and then bad things happen. Why aren't sports writers required to have at least been high school varsity athletes?

And finally, speaking of confidence: The Sharks lost their series opener against Calgary last night despite one of the greatest last minutes flurries I have ever seen. Miikka Kiprusoff was spectacular and Jerome Iginla was everywhere for the Flames. However, I think the Sharks were overconfident at the start, expecting their win streak to just carry them into the next round. Don't count on that again. Take away the Flames' first 5 minutes and Iginla's spectacular steal and breakaway goal (actually knocked in by Stephan Yelle), San Jose dominated the game. Joe Thornton will score twice tonight and the Sharks will win by 3 at least.